Thursday, February 28, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Monday, February 25, 2013

“[House Speaker] Boehner’s sequester could cost more than 750,000 private- and public-sector workers
their jobs this year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).”

Erskine Bowles, President Clinton’s Chief-of-Staff, and co-chair of President Obama’s bipartisan deficit
commission, characterized the coming “sequestration” slashing across all government programs great
and small as “stupid, stupid, stupid!” It’s an assertion that can’t be refuted. It ranks right up there with
Lunch Box Joe Biden’s advice to nervous women home alone to start blasting away with a shotgun in
the vicinity of unseen suspected prowlers.

But Washington Post veteran Bob Woodward, who has been exposing White House deceit since the
days of Watergate, reminds us the sequester deal originated with the current administration--to get an
interim deal, the Budget Control Act of 2011. Woodward has a lot of documentation compiled while
producing his book The Price of Politics. He writes in Saturday’s Post,

“Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews
with two senior White House aides who were directly involved. Nabors has told others that they checked
with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing
mechanism they could devise.”

They undoubtedly thought this plan would be “action-forcing” because even Congress could not be so
stupid as to actually carry out random sequestration. But they may have underestimated the lack of
intelligent design guiding their Capitol Hill adversaries. We now sit as petrified backseat passengers,
without even seat belts or air-bags, watching headlights closing rapidly in a game of chicken.

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

That’s how the 9,000 New York City school bus drivers and matrons represented by ATU Local 1181
must have felt during their five-week strike. They not only had to contend with private bus company
bosses looking to slash labor costs during a new competitive bidding process for city contracts. City Hall
also condemned the strike and even supported an unsuccessful effort to get the NLRB to rule it an unfair
labor practice. And then there was the mass media with its daily barrage against what they characterized
as a futile, if not illegal work stoppage bringing great hardship to special needs kids and their parents.
When thousands of strikers and supporters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge as the city was still
digging out from a major storm the New York Times judged this to be news unfit to print.

There’s a lot of malarkey these days about putting kids first. But this example of austerity targets those
entrusted with the safe, caring transportation of kids who can’t walk to school or use the regular mass
transit. These experienced, dedicated workers are now subject to the same business model that prevails
in fast food. The shared goal of the City and private employers is to reduce wages to about a third of
present levels–currently 42,500 a year for bus drivers, 26,000 for matrons. These are hardly princely
sums in New York City. Slashing these to the 17,000 -25,000 range would push the ATU workers in
to the ranks of the working poor.

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

We will be observing the Presidents Day Holiday Monday. The next News Update will be Tuesday, February 19.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

On Wednesday, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe defied law and custom by unilaterally declaring
an end to Saturday mail delivery. Unless he is called to order by Congress or the President, first class
home delivery will go on a five day week in August. 22,500 more full-time letter carrier jobs will be
eliminated. No regular temporary workers will be affected–Donahoe feels sorry for them because they
are “mostly so young.”

The cut is projected to save two billion dollars a year. The move comes in the midst of the axing of tens
of thousands of jobs at mail processing centers being shut down around the country. It is the most
ruthless of the austerity measures yet taken by the Obama administration and perhaps the least justified
of all.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Monday, February 4, 2013

The President opened his second term
focusing on the trending, emotionally-charged issue of gun-control. He
sought to balance his rhetoric for restrictions on magazine capacity and
background checks
by confessing to a reporter that, far from being anti-gun, his guilty
pleasures include shooting a skeet
now and then. When some raised doubts about this previously undisclosed
penchant for slaughtering
clay pigeons the White House released photographic proof , showing POTUS
absorbing the recoil of
a smoking shotgun. They even managed to include a clear image of the
Nike® sign of the swoosh on
his sleeve.

Whether this unexpected revelation will serve him as well as photos of Teddy Roosevelt accompanying
the future German Kaiser on an African safari, or Saddam Hussein brandishing a long barrel birthday
gift from the Iraqi parliament, remains to be seen. There’s always the risk that reaction might be more
like the ridicule that fell upon presidential candidate Michael Dukakis when he was shown with a
helmeted head protruding from the turret of a tank.

In any case, the present gun-control dust-up is likely episodic. It is not, borrowing the market vernacular
of the raging smart phone wars, the Next Big Thing in Washington.

Presidents, with an eye on history books/downloads as they guide the ship of state to destinations
determined by the ruling class, require more time for their Big Things than Apple or Samsung. In his
first term, President Obama’s main domestic accomplishment was won only after nearly two years of
take-no-prisoners combat in and with Congress– the Orwellian Affordable Care Act. Each day brings
some new revelation about this “reform” that falls far short of promised universal care while making
health costs less affordable than ever. Everything points to immigration “reform” as the Next Big Thing.

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Each Monday-Friday, by 9AM Central,
we’ll post links to news stories and analytical articles
of interest to working people. Sometimes they will be
accompanied by editorial commentary. Stories from the New
York Times will be followed with a *. The Times
pay wall policy
allows free access to only about ten articles a month.

About the Blogger

Retiree member of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1287. Active member National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981. Webmaster of kclabor.org since March, 2000. Former Vice-President of ATU 1287. In Minneapolis during Seventies-Eighties held several posts in UE Local 1139 including Local President and Shop Chairman at Litton Microwave. Charter member of Labor Party Advocates. Founding member of US Labor Against the War.